These days, you probably hear a lot about probiotics: live organisms, such as bacteria and yeast, found in food and supplements that some say help maintain the immune system and gut function by keeping the intestine lining healthy and by fighting off bad bacteria. What’s the hype, and what’s real? And can probiotics help with rheumatoid arthritis (RA)? Here's a little background.

Gut Health and Overall Health

The gut microbiome, which consists of trillions of bacteria, viruses, fungi, and other tiny creatures known as microbiota, performs many critical functions, such as digesting certain types of carbohydrates, helping the immune system, and fighting off pathogens (disease-causing microbes).

Foods That Offer a Probiotic Boost

While definitive connections between the gut microbiome and RA have yet to be discovered, it can't hurt for you to introduce healthful probiotics into your system via healthy foods.

Bonnie Taub-Dix, RDN, the creator of BetterThanDieting.com and the author of Read It Before You Eat It, says, “It’s better to get probiotics through real, whole foods rather than supplements. They don't only contain probiotics; they also contain an array of other nutrients that are important for good health, like vitamins and minerals. Whole foods also boost satiety and reduce appetite because of their high fiber content,” she says.

To up your probiotic intake, chow down on fermented foods, such as pickles, sauerkraut, kimchi, yogurt with live cultures, and kefir.

Concerns About Supplement Quality

Because the FDA doesn’t oversee the manufacture of these products, you really have no way of knowing exactly what you are getting.

In 2015, when ConsumerLab.com tested 18 probiotics sold in the U.S., 16 lived up to their claims; the two that didn't contained just under 50 percent of the listed amounts of organisms. ConsumerLab.com will publish a new report later this year.

Guidelines for Probiotic Supplementation

If you do want to try probiotic supplements, take them daily. Probiotics will only survive a few days to about three weeks in your system after you stop taking them. In addition, ConsumerLab.com says to look for the following on the labels:

Number of live organisms Since our gut bacteria population is in the trillions, anything less than 1 billion CFUs (colony-forming units) is just a drop in the bucket, and several billion may be better.

Organism survival factor Active organisms eventually die. Typically manufacturers factor that in by displaying the amount you should expect at the expiration date. Some products, however, list the amount at the time of manufacture, and that amount can decrease by as much as 50 percent by the sell-by date.